Normal
by Dragon's Lover1
Summary: During breakfast one day, Megamind laments that he isn't normal to Roxanne, confessing how hard it is for him to appear. . .normal. Short, cute and fluffy.


**Disclaimer:** _Megamind_ is owned by _DreamWorks_. I am not profiting from this fan fiction.

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 _ **Normal**_

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It was about two months since they'd begun dating. Roxanne found very quickly that Megamind would do anything and everything to make every visit comfortable for her — the exact opposite of all the years she spent getting kidnapped once a week, in which his goal was to keep her uncomfortable. . .though, in his defense, never in _danger_.

It was actually getting quite hilarious. If they walked somewhere, he went out of his way to keep pace beside her at whichever speed she was going and never step in front of her. If they ate somewhere and her plate was hot, well. . .twice that had resulted in him freezing it solid with some gun or another. Conversely, if she ordered ice cream and it was too cold, that was solved with a heat ray. And if they went to a park or some other place and sought privacy, he actually set up a perimeter first — once with a shock fence that she forced him to take down, lest someone get hurt, and the following times with a series of cubes designed to camouflage them.

In her opinion, he was being adorable. . .if a bit exasperating. But, then, she already knew his personality was all about overdoing things.

What she wasn't expecting was to catch him staring at her in utter befuddlement during a shared breakfast one morning. She was midway through spreading jam over a bagel when she noticed it; he was just sitting across from her, mouth partway open, head leaning on his fist, his eyes more confused than she'd ever seen them.

"What?" she asked, feeling just a tad bit uncomfortable. Having him _that_ deep in thought was usually a precursor to something unpleasant, and his recent switch to hero did nothing to soothe years of learned reactions.

"Huh?" was his immediate response, clearly too lost to catch what she'd said. And then he jolted, sitting upright in one swift motion. "Oh, sorry — that. Yes, well. . .I was just wondering. . .how are you so _normal?_ "

Her mind echoed the word, as did her lips, as her own bout of confusion set in. "Normal?" she pressed, incredulous.

He waved his arms with his usual exaggerated flair, answering, "Normal! You! I don't understand it. I've tried to be _normal_ too. But I can't. And there you sit, quietly buttering your bagel —"

"It's jam," she cut in.

Ignoring that, he went on, "And it isn't the slightest bit difficult for you."

That was perplexing. "What are you comparing it to?" she wondered. "Is it difficult for _you_ to do such things?"

"Well, yes," he answered, looking even more confused. "I always end up spending so much energy and cognitive presence every day on just _not_ reacting to things the way I want to. You make it look so easy. . ."

Honestly, Roxanne wasn't sure how to feel about that. He'd always seemed so flamboyant, so reactive, so animated, she'd never thought that he might be actively fighting his own urges to act. On the one hand, aside from general surprise, she felt warmed by his sudden confession and confidence in her to say it. On the other hand, it was a little worrisome, reminding her that for all she knew of him, she still didn't know him very well at all.

Sure, she understood his devices, his theatrics, his desire for acceptance. But his mind was far from her grasp, and considering the monumental differences in their cognitive abilities, she expected she would never fully understand him.

Still, she tried to be comforting, setting her bagel aside to grasp one of his hands. "Let me tell you something, a little thing I learned from my years in journalism," she began, talking low to make it into a secret. Her tactic worked, Megamind leaning in and looking _extremely_ interested — she made a mental note that making a bit of knowledge seem rare worked wonders in getting his attention.

Then she whispered, "There's no such thing as 'normal'."

At once, his face went from piqued to dumbfounded. "What?" he retorted. "Of course there's normal. It's a thing. It's the average of anything."

True. But she argued with a shake of her head, "Not for people. The thing about 'normal' is that most everyone tries very hard to look that way, but they each have a different perspective, a different understanding for what that means. In the end, in my opinion at least, 'normal' is acting however you feel is the most natural. So, on that note, tell me — how would you jam a bagel?"

Though her words succeeded in intriguing him — his expression easing from interest to shock to understanding and finally to relief — her final question had him hedging. He eased back from her, even taking his hand back, looking uncomfortable. "Not with a knife," he grumbled, avoiding her gaze.

Funny enough, she accepted that without question — namely because she had no idea how he would answer and wasn't sure she wanted to know. Smiling a bit to herself, she resumed her task again, adding, "Well, I'm not going to tell you how to behave from here on out. But I _will_ tell you that you can relax," she advised with an arched brow. "And besides, maybe 'normal' for your people is different from the 'normal' for humans."

At that, he snorted. " _Please,_ Roxanne," he argued, offended, "I was already eight days old when I left. I remember what my people were like just fine. . .and they were pretty much the same as humans. Just a lot more blinky lights and sleek metal surfaces were involved."

That comment made her pause as she was setting aside her knife, staring at him in her own bout of befuddlement. "You remember your life at eight days old?" she queried. At his careless nod, she could only reply with, "Huh. Okay. I didn't know that. How far back can you remember?"

"That's a little hard to pinpoint," he answered. "Like humans, the earliest memories are fuzzy around the edges and it's hard to establish a timeline. I would posit that I was two days old when my immaculate recollection kicked in."

Though she took in this new information, her mind snagged onto a different point. "How is it you can pronounce 'immaculate recollection' without any difficulty but can't say 'school' correctly without forcing it?" she wondered.

That one made him blush, but he answered, "Schumacher, Schmidt, Schultz and Schwenke."

Oh. "People you knew?" she asked.

He nodded. "At the prison, when I was young and learning English, two were guards, one was a psychiatrist and another was an inmate."

And that, she noted, made it normal for him. Smirking to herself, she commented, "Well, then, I'd say that makes your pronunciation very normal. Or. . .as normal as English can be," she added with a touch of disdain. It was such a here-and-there language, taking whichever word fit for a word they didn't have beforehand and blending them all together until every rule was only applicable part of the time.

Once more her beau looked a bit relieved. It made her wonder just how much time and energy he spent trying to be normal — and considering he _wasn't_ all that normal at all, it had to be exceptionally high. That thought led to another, that perhaps she _should_ see his technique for spreading jam on a bagel sometime. Maybe it wasn't as bad as all that and he was just sweating over it for no reason.

Then again, maybe it involved a gun of some form. She wouldn't put it past him.

"I'll tell you what," she said now, giving him a smile, "we'll go out for a date next Thursday. And on this day, we do everything you want to do, how you want to do, no questions asked."

And just like that, his eyes lit up like a kid who'd just seen Santa Claus in person for the first time. A part of her dreaded what she'd just gotten herself into, but the rest of her. . .

. . .the rest of her was actually kind of excited.

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 _Finishing Notes:_ This is an idea that smacked into me pretty hard while looking around deviantART at various Mad Hatter / Alice pics. One of them had an attached short scene about Reginald (Hatter) being jealous at how easy it is for Alice to be normal all the time. It made me think of Megamind immediately (though for different reasons) and inspired this to be born.

Unfortunately I probably won't continue this at all because honestly I have no idea just how crazy-brilliant-flamboyant Megamind could be if he never regulated himself. I imagine something like a ferret on a sugar high would be a close comparison, only with various potentially dangerous devices at its disposal.


End file.
